Moira Forbes hosts the video series "Success with Moira Forbes" and "Women to Watch." She is publisher of ForbesWoman, a multi-media platform serving successful women in business and leadership. Representing four generations of publishers, Moira joined Forbes in 2001 in its London office. She graduated from Princeton University.

During a royal visit to a relief center in Copenhagen last week, the Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, politely declined her husband’s offer to try “peanut paste,” a malnutrition ration sent in African relief packets. That seemingly benign refusal ignited yet another frenzy of pregnancy rumors. Expectant moms, you see, are advised to avoid peanuts.

Just six months into her marriage, Kate Middleton lives under full-time ‘pregnancy watch’ as the world awaits the arrival of the couple’s first-born and future inheritor of the throne (which as of a few weeks ago, can now include a girl).

Kate’s experience, admittedly extreme and exaggerated, is not completely unique. Once you’re married, the questions begin–and if you haven’t started a family within a couple of years, people also begin the why-not chatter. If you’re in your childbearing years, you’re under a reproductive microscope, regardless of whether you’re royalty or just an average woman who’s at that stage in life where people assume you should have a baby in tow.

Married now for over three years, my husband and I have yet to start a family and I constantly field questions about my “reproductive aspirations.” They come from every direction. Just in the past week, I was asked when I would ‘start trying’ by a flight attendant as I waited in line for the bathroom, a lawyer seated next to me at a dinner, and a neighbor in my building who I only recognized by her dog. Throw in acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family, and the topic of when I will start having kids has become a small talk topic like the weather or your next vacation.

Women in their baby-prime also experience their fair share of the “peanut paste moments,” although thankfully not in front of the whole world. How often do you watch whether (or not!) a 30-something married friend has a cocktail at dinner? I know I do – and I was mortified to learn my in-laws thought I was expecting after I left a full glass of champagne at dinner because it was flat, not because I would soon show a bump.

We all know (or should) that it’s taboo to ask a woman if she’s pregnant. Yet I’m puzzled why we have such a comfort level asking about one of the most personal things in a woman’s life. Most are well intentioned: babies are usually a happy topic and starting a family is one of the few-shared experiences in life. Or maybe we’ve become a baby bump obsessed world. Any time a celebrity shows anything but washboard abs, her photo appears on every tabloid magazine with speculations of a little one on the way.

Yet if you take a step back, you have to wonder why we feel so comfortable asking a perfect stranger about their reproductive schedule when other seemingly less topics like religion are taboo. What’s more, conversations around having children can be sensitive, complicated and incredibly painful for women. In a time when women can often control when not to become pregnant, people assume that the choice to start conceiving is just as easy, like a light switch. And for those women who have chosen not have to children, they are met with judgmental assumptions and unsolicited opinions at every pass.

I don’t think anyone intentionally aims to be rude or invasive when they ask a woman when she’s going to have kids. That said, the obvious truth is that if women wanted to talk about it, she would bring it up herself.

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